Session One

While reading the introductory chapter of the text, I found myself thinking about my own organization's IT problems and solutions. Given my government agency's difficulties developing and rolling out IT software applications, it is no wonder. My organization has been undergoing rapid changes, reorganizations as well as a re-imagining of our primary mission. Along with that, rapid, and sometimes hasty, development of new software solutions has added to the organizational confusion. While many at my agency complain of change fatigue, the changes are necessary and the need is pressing to keep up with the changing pace of society. Though, sometimes I feel that many of the changes we make are for change's sake, and so the upper management can say they accomplished something during their tenure in a position. Often, time and money is wasted. That's part of the problem with government, at least the part I'm in, there's little accountability for final results, especially since by the time the results are in, a new management is in place.

Since I haven't been in the workforce very long, I have trouble visualizing the changes made to management structure. In the government, it still seems like there are a lot of management levels and a lot of bureaucracy. I don't know that information technology has changed that aspect. What it has changed is a lot of lower level positions that inputted and processed data no longer exist. For example, we no longer have a large staff whose sole purpose is cataloging finger print cards, since the system is electronic. There are still individuals responsible for scanning finger print cards and running queries, but the number is much less. In addition, a lot of finger printing is now done electronically, removing one more step in the process.

I once worked for a company who processed coupons for various retail chains. It was very time consuming and involved the sorting, totaling, and billing for various coupons. Now, I imagine that with electronic scanners and new program applications a number of the positions responsible for doing those mundane tasks has decreased.